


Everywhere In Chains

by Unsentimentalf



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-14
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 18:01:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Avon is reluctant to let Blake know too much about his more extreme fantasies.  He does have his pride, after all.  And then comes a visit to a nasty little planet called Kilva...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everywhere In Chains

He can't move.

His face is pressed against the smooth wall, right arm twisted high behind his back, left wrist held next to his ear in a seemingly relentless grip. The roughness of leather scrapes against his bare back, legs push against his thighs. He can hear the fast breathing of the man behind him, but he can't turn enough to see his face.

This is, Avon thinks, with that appraising part of his brain that never quite turns off, moderately humiliating. It’s also the hottest sex he's had in years. He's prepared to endure a certain amount of the former for the sake of the latter.

He has limits, though. When Blake's mouth closes high under his jaw, he does a quick assessment of the collar height on his current favourite outfit.

"Stop."

The pressure against his body vanishes as Blake lets go and steps back. Avon had only intended him to stop the mouthing; the sudden lack of contact leaves him feeling bereft. Not that he can tell Blake that, obviously.

“Too much?” Blake asks.

No, you idiot. Just too careless. Avon neither turns round nor moves away from the wall. Instead he spreads his hands up against it; an obvious invitation to carry on where they left off. "No one is going to believe that we're discussing tactics for extracting that computer from Kilva in here if I come out with your teethmarks on my throat.”

“They don't believe that anyway.” Blake is right. Annoyingly, of course.

"Nonetheless I'd rather keep the exact nature of our ‘discussions’ a matter of speculation rather than public knowledge.” It's bad enough having Blake know about this. He doesn't need to be the laughing stock of the entire ship.

“Fair enough.” Blake concedes. “I'll be sure to leave no marks where anyone else can see them.”

Marks. God, the thought of being marked by Blake is hot. Avon makes a mental note to add it into his favourite fantasy of being chained up and fucked senseless by the man. He doesn’t know what Blake might make of that particular scenario if an invitation were ever to be extended. No such invitation can be made, now or ever, of course. He does have some pride.

In the three weeks that they’ve been having sex this is as far as they’ve got towards fulfilling Avon’s more unconventional desires. He knows that he can’t afford to let these scenarios go any further, not and retain any of the other man’s respect. Blake has taken the opportunity to finish undressing before moving in behind him again, large hands covering his, crushing them against the warmth of the wall here in his quarters. Now Avon can feel the man’s erection hard against his own clothed buttocks. With an act of conscious will he manages not to whimper but he does grind back against it a little.

“Hmm?” Blake’s low enquiry vibrates against his spine. Avon doesn’t dignify it with an answer; his approval of what is happening is already clearly enough on display.

Blake tugs his wrists together over Avon’s head, traps them with his left. His right is at Avon’s belt buckle, then, having dealt with that, inside his trousers. Avon allows himself to groan in pleasure as Blake runs his thumb across the head of his cock. That’s just sex; he’s allowed to enjoy it. In fact it would be impolite not to.

Blake fondles him for a moment or two, then tugs Avon’s trousers down. The man’s erection is sliding across his bare buttocks now, the scent of the lubricant they use suddenly strong in the room. Avon works his trapped legs sideways a fraction, widening the space between them. It’s still going to be a seriously awkward angle if Blake doesn’t let him move a little away from the wall, but that’s not Avon’s responsibility, not this time. Sure enough, an ankle wraps around his lower left leg, dragging it a good foot further out from the wall, followed by the same for his right.

That’s more like it. He rests his forearms against the wall and his head on his forearms. Blake still has his wrists pinioned, though weakly enough that he could break free without much effort, but Avon has no interest in doing anything right now except co-operating.

Co-operation gets him what he wants soon enough, which is Blake’s solid mass inside him and the nails of Blake’s free hand digging into his hip. He’s gasping now without any attempt at hiding just how turned on he is. But instead of moving Blake nips his shoulder and he hisses in lust and desperation.

“Talk to me, Avon.”

Now? Avon gathers his scattered thoughts. There had been something... “Since Orac can’t even detect the computer on Kilva its components might not be in a recognisable form.”

“Not about that!”

“What, then?”

Blake is nuzzling at his spine. “Tell me you like this.”

Avon is instantly wary. “What makes you think I do?”

“Oh, you’re making it pretty obvious.” Blake’s hand moves from his thigh around to his cock, squeezes and Avon bites back a curse.

“So why do you need me to say it? Insecurity, or arrogance?”

Blake lets go. “No, you’re right.” He sounds exasperated. “I should have known nothing would break the mood faster than getting you to open your mouth.”

Avon considers a number of ripostes and rejects all the ones that he calculates will lead to an immediate cessation of proceedings, which doesn’t leave him with much. He goes for something relatively conciliatory. “Pillow talk isn’t really my forte, I’m afraid. Could we just skip the chattering and get on with it?”

“Just get on with it?” Blake sounds more offended than placated.

“Why not?”

Blake is at least moving now, slowly. It’s good. Now if the man will only shut up for a bit…

“Why the hell am I sleeping with you at all?” Blake’s low, breathless complaint is, unfortunately, still audible.

“This is why.” Avon snaps back, pushing back onto him, hard. The manoeuvre’s too rough to be entirely comfortable for him but he can hear Blake’s gasp of pleasure. It gets the man moving again and keeps him from saying anything else so it’s well worth the brief twinge of soreness, particularly as he manages not to alert Blake by flinching.

Now they are screwing again, properly this time, and Avon lets his animal instincts take over for a while; no need for calculation or control. Blake bites him a couple more times, somewhere below his left shoulderblade and he flings his head back, panting. His hands are still, deliciously, trapped. Blake’s going to come soon, from the noises the man’s making behind him, Blake’s arm tight around his stomach now, pulling them closer together.

“Fuck. Avon. Avon.” And Blake’s gone, gasping barely coherently. Avon finds that particular use of his name a little disconcerting but he doesn’t complain. He’s more interested to know what Blake intends for his own erection, already recovering rapidly from the tendency to limpness that being screwed hard always engenders. He’s not seventeen; the body has limits. Not too many limits, though; by the time Blake has caught his breath again, Avon’s more than ready for the man to get started.

“Avon.” Blake’s free hand rubs patterns across his shoulderblades. “Kerr Avon. What the hell am I going to do about you?”

“Rhetorical? Or do you need a suggestion?”

“I suppose rhetorical, yes.” Blake reaches round to pinch a nipple and Avon shudders. “I think I can probably come up with one or two practical proposals on my own.”

“Practical would be appropriate right now. We can discuss rhetoric afterwards.” Or, preferably, never.

“Right.” Blake sounds sceptical; he’s guessed the silent coda, then. Avon doesn’t hugely care; he just wants Blake to touch him, properly. 

Blake drags his wrists to cross each other behind his back. "Turn round." Avon turns, his arms trapped (not really trapped but it will do as entertainment) between his back and the wall, takes the opportunity to shake the trousers off from around his ankles and kick them away. There's a perfectly good bed not ten feet away but this is better and it seems that Blake's got no problem with it either, from the width of his grin. 

Blake's palms hit Avon's shoulders, hard enough to jar his head back against the wall. Blake's pinning him at arms length now, taking the opportunity for a slow look down and up again. "You look remarkable." 

Avon thinks that's unlikely. He's good looking, admittedly, but Blake's tendency to hyperbole is more irritating than flattering. Still, he tries to take it as a compliment. "Thank you. Now can we...?" 

Blake comes forward enough to push a knee between his thighs, letting him grind into a hip, and to kiss him. Blake's kissing is genuinely remarkable, Avon has to concede (though not to Blake, obviously). It’s extremely singleminded and just a little bit rougher that is good mannered. Avon’s getting quite addicted to the taste of Blake’s tongue in his mouth. It’s easy not to let that worry him right now.

There’s a hand now, still sticky from lubricant, squeezing Avon’s cock up against Blake’s hip. That’s going to be enough to get him off in just a few more thrusts. He turns his head, pulls his mouth away from Blake’s, reluctantly, so that he can take the deep breaths he’s desperate for. 

“I love it when you lose control.” Blake murmurs in his ear. Avon barely processes it, his mind only on the sensation in his cock. The teeth in his neck go almost unnoticed as he comes in shudders across Blake’s stomach and collapses back against the wall.

And now he feels it. He lifts a hand to the stinging patch. “I said no!”

“Don’t fuss. It’s lower down, it will be under your jacket collar. Almost entirely.” Blake’s pushing at their boundaries again but Avon’s feeling too drained to take him on right now. He crosses the room to throw himself down on the bed.

“Kilva is almost certainly extremely dangerous,” he says. He’s lying on his back, eyes half closed, not quite focussing on the ceiling.

Blake joins him, sprawling stomach downwards, an arm casually draped across Avon’s chest. “We have to do it. You know that.”

Avon contemplates the predictable level of contamination of his bedspread. Too late now to chide Blake, who would doubtless only retort that Avon was contributing equally. True, if he’d lain on his front and Blake on his back, that might have avoided the worse of it… 

Kilva. “The problem is that I have to do it, if anyone does. No-one else has a hope of identifying idiosyncratic computer components.”

“No,” Blake agrees, without inflection. 

“So persuade me that it’s in my best interests to go.”

Blake snorts. “That would have been easier five minutes ago.”

“Believe me, you’re not quite good enough to make me lose my head completely.”

The other man laughs, surprised. “I think there might have been a compliment hidden under there somewhere.”

“If there was it’s irrelevant to the discussion. Kilva, Blake. Do I really need to go there?”

Blake adopts his lecture voice. “Kilva and Meros. Two binary worlds in the same system, settled simultaneously nearly 400 years ago. Both adopted anti-technology policies and have refused contact with the outside world and, one assumes, each other, since settlement. Scans have confirmed both have basically agrarian economies with populations in the low millions and absolutely no trace of computing technology, though atmospheric changes indicate that Kilva has recently acquired basic fossil fuel based electromagnetic systems. The Federation have left them alone so far; they are just outside their current borders and there’s nothing for it there except a large, fundamentalist and therefore potentially rebellious population.”

Blake taps on Avon’s chest in emphasis. “Orac agrees with the above, and confirms that it can detect absolutely no computer activity on Kilva. Yet ten days ago three solid fuel rockets carrying primitive explosive payloads took off from Kilva and hit all three populated continents of Meros.”

“That’s fundamentalists for you,” Avon comments. “They carry long grudges.” He’s heard all the background earlier but it doesn’t hurt to have Blake’s current thinking. Nothing about Kilva makes him want to go near the place. “So they’ve got a computer that Orac can’t read. Not a particularly sophisticated one, though. Zen could compute those trajectories in a microsecond.”

“Kilva may have developed a completely new computing technology. It doesn’t have to be sophisticated yet; the Federation have plenty of people who can add the bells and buckles. I’d much rather we had it first. Wouldn’t you?”

Avon would, undoubtedly. He just doesn’t fancy dying for it. “I meant it about carrying grudges. These people develop novel computer tech for the sole purpose of blowing things up, and the first people they attack are ones they’ve had no contact with for 400 years. That’s a viciously insular mindset. I imagine if they catch me in an attempt at industrial espionage they won’t slap me on the wrist and let me go.”

“Come on, Avon. With Liberator as back up I’m pretty sure we can keep ahead of a bunch of farmers.”

“A bunch of psychopathic farmers. With guns.”

“Primitive projectile weapons, according to the reports. Ever heard of a bullet proof vest?”

Avon knows he’s going to agree. He doesn’t like the idea, but with teleports, the ship’s scanners and Liberator’s weapons, not to mention the self-evidently titled bullet proof vest it shouldn’t actually be that dangerous. He isn’t going to hesitate to use the weapons either. He’s not going to give any mean son of a bitch from a backward planet like Kilva a chance to kill him first.

“If we take a reasonably high orbit whatever primitive sensors they might have won’t be able to detect us. We can get as much information as we can before going in.”

Blake grimaces. “Ideally, yes, but we got the report about the attack from a Federation report a few hours ago. It’s possible that they might be curious as well. I don’t think we should hang around doing detailed surveys.”

Avon doubts that the Federation will bother them this time. Without Orac’s unique abilities they wouldn’t have any way to know that the computer used was anything out of the ordinary. Unpleasant genocidal regimes attacking their nearest neighbours, though not exactly common, certainly aren’t rare or interesting enough to warrant an immediate Federation response. 

Even after he’s pointed all this out Blake still seems to be more concerned about the Federation than the Kilvans which Avon thinks is ridiculous; in his experience a few pursuit ships are considerably easier to deal with than a bunch of crazy muck dwellers carrying sharp objects with murder in mind. They finally agree on a minimum of a full aerial survey of the launch sites and an up to date overview of the state of technology elsewhere on the planet, in particular sensors, communications and weaponry, before they go in. 

It’s rare enough that they agree on anything. Maybe the sex helps, Avon thinks. Blake seems to be a little easier to deal with when sated. It’s not going to be a feasible way of dealing with most of their disputes, which tend to take place on the bridge with witnesses, but he tucks it away as worth remembering anyway.

He hasn’t got time for any more testing, unfortunately. Having got his agreement Blake wants to be off immediately to keep in front of those non-existent pursuit ships. A quick shower and Avon’s dressing again. The mark on his neck is just hidden by his collar, if he keeps that high and forward. He objects to being made to hunch slightly to conceal Blake’s heedlessness, but he knows that he will anyway, at least until he gets access to the med unit while no-one else is around. (The bite marks on his back will stay there, though. He hasn’t looked in the mirror for them, but he can feel them still when he rolls his shoulders. He keeps having to resist the urge to do that; it’s not helping to conceal the bite at the front.)

Blake presents their conclusions to the rest of the crew. Avon catches the flicker that goes between Vila and Jenna; he’s not sure if it’s for their unusual show of agreement or the revelation that they have in fact been discussing Kilva and not just indulging in whatever sordid practices the others have imagined (hopefully not accurately) that they have been up to. Probably both. He had rather enjoyed dropping hints of his sexual activities with Blake into the Liberator’s gossip mill three weeks ago, but since then he has found the continual interest in what they might be doing at any given time extremely wearing. It doesn’t seem reasonable. Other people manage to have sex on this ship regularly without this prurient curiosity from everyone else. 

No-one else raises any real objections to the Kilva venture, probably because Blake is making it clear that he intends to go down with Avon, leaving the others in the safety of the ship orbiting a planet with no better aggressive technology than primitive and extremely sublight rockets. 

* * * * * * * * * *

“Clockwork.” Avon says in disgust, jabbing a finger at the plans carefully inscribed in some sort of ink on grey parchment.

“Clockwork and a handful of electrical relays,” Blake corrects him. “Can you really launch a rocket on this stuff?”

“You’re the engineer. But Zen says that optimal routes from here to the centres of impact on Meros only require between six and eight booster firings. I imagine you could hardwire that much; these things aren’t designed with any flexibility at all.”

Blake nods. “So all you’d need is the calculation of an optimal route.” 

Avon glances out of the control room’s high window at the large moon in the night sky and the dark shape of the rocket on its pad. “Which needs to take into account the gravitational fields from three massive bodies orbiting each other. They must have a computer.”

Blake is leafing through the other bits of paper. “Here’s the final solution for the next one in three days time; rocket mass, time of launch, firing times, strengths, booster orientations, impact time. All the numbers are here but no indication of how they were calculated.”

Avon strides around the room, opening cabinets and glancing at their contents. “Nothing here that looks anything like computing operations, and everything’s written out by hand. It must be held elsewhere.”

Blake wanders off into the next room. “I don’t think there’s anything…” he starts, and then hell breaks loose.

The soldiers come in from several directions and they come in firing. If they’d had real weapons Avon wouldn’t have stood a chance. As it is the multiple impacts knock him off his feet easily. He gets off two wild shots before they are onto him, grabbing his gun and pinning him down. 

“Get that thing round his wrist” someone commands and the teleport bracelet is ripped off. 

“Isn’t he dead?” The commander comes over to look. “No, I see he isn’t. Interesting.” He draws his own gun from the holster and fires at Avon’s chest from about a foot away. Avon is smashed back against the floor, gasping for breath. That isn’t at all pleasant; he’s pretty sure some ribs have just fractured. 

“Bring him along. Sion will want to see this. Where’s the other one?”

“Vanished, sir.” A man salutes.

“Run away?”

“No sir. Vanished from right in front of us.” 

Blake has got away. That’s something. Avon is fairly confident that rescue will turn up at some point, even if he can’t retrieve his bracelet, provided that he can stop these trigger happy oafs from killing him first. First step is to go with the soldiers without protest. Hopefully they are taking him to someone he can deal with.

Sion is a fair haired man in his thirties, clearly very much in charge and not just of the rocket site. Avon pegs him as a scientist-politician-leader and probably something of a tyrant. He listens to the reports without expression. 

“A Meros saboteur.” 

Avon shakes his head in irritation. “Meros hasn’t got electricity yet. It’s hardly likely to be engaging in interplanetary travel.”

Sion looks sternly at him. “We all know that the aggressors of Meros are on the point of invasion. Only constant vigilance and public service can keep our planet safe.” 

Avon reckons that Sion doesn’t believe a word of that. The roomful of possible VIPs, on the other hand, are nodding vigorously. It’s not his job to enlighten Kilva about the lies its leader tells, but he could do with getting Sion onside.

“I don’t come from Meros. I have no interest in them. I’m an independent party.”

“So what were you doing in my rocket complex, if not sabotage?”

That does take some explaining. Avon decides to go for something near the truth.

“I was interested in your computer. I’m a computer specialist, one of the best in the galaxy. I could be of great help to you in developing its capabilities in whatever way you need.”

The room has gone silent; everyone is staring at him. The guards have seized his arms again, are holding him still while Sion smoothly draws a sidearm and shoots him in the chest.

Fuck, that hurts, again. He’s fairly sure that he screamed this time. He’s hanging limp from the soldiers’ arms, the people around him loud now with shock and excitement

Sion steps forward and rips his jacket open to reveal the smooth black material of the impact amelioration material (bullet proof vest to anyone but Orac). “Get all this stuff off him. I want him on the platform, naked and in chains by the time we start public service.”

Avon has been rather too busy getting shot to wonder why there are so many important people apparently up and about before dawn. He wonders about it now. It doesn’t seem to be for his benefit. The soldiers aren’t particularly gentle about stripping him and he greatly misses the undergarments, which weren’t particularly comfortable but have saved his life at least three times in the last half hour. The chains are welded around his wrists and ankles, a procedure both painful and worrying. So far Kilva is living down to his worst expectations.

The platform is in front of the huge plaza that every Kilvan town possesses, each big enough, Orac estimated, for their entire adult population. “Question mark religious ceremonies,” it had suggested and “more research needed”. Blake hadn’t wanted to spend the extra time- he’d argued that the natives’ religious rites were very unlikely to be relevant to their mission. Avon hopes to live long enough to tell the man in no uncertain terms just how wrong he was.

Sure enough, it appears that the entire adult population of the city is there. Avon estimates three hundred thousand people, all drawn up in what look like military units and battalions. There are no screens but there is a primitive loudspeaker system relaying everything to the furthest edges of the plaza. It’s not yet dawn but it’s still light enough to see to the distant buildings beyond, since the great ball of the binary Meros hangs in the sky, gleaming brightly with the sun’s reflected light. Avon wonders how much this overhead presence contributes to Kilva’s paranoia about Meros. He decides that he doesn’t really care. His chest hurts a great deal, there are burns on his wrists, and he just wants to go home. Home to Blake, he thinks, and the thought surprises him. It’s true, though. Right now, miserable and trapped, it’s Roj Blake he thinks about when he thinks about freedom.

The crowd have quietened in anticipation. Sion has come to stand just a couple of feet from where Avon is held.

“People of Kilva. Before today’s public service starts, I want to share with you an incident which reminds us all of the terrible evil that we are facing.”

The chain of loudspeakers repeat his words with a few seconds delay down the crowd until all have heard.

“Tonight our brave soldiers captured a saboteur in the process of trying to blow up number 2 rocket facility.”

He pauses to let the transmission finish. The crowd are rumbling a little. 

“When we questioned the saboteur he told us that not only was he from Meros. Not only did he confirm that their plans to destroy us are well advanced. But he also told us that he was…”

He pauses again. Playing the crowd. Avon wonders what further atrocity he will be blamed for. 

“…a computer specialist.”

The crowd nearest to the platform erupt. Avon can see the chaos spread back as the loudspeakers carry the message. Within maybe sixty seconds the neat rows and squares are a heaving mass of screaming, shouting people. He can hear not just the baying anger but the other kind of screams as people are tramped and crushed by the crowds. The mass of guards surrounding the platform are shooting systematically into the nearest part of the crowd to keep them from being overrun but no-one makes any attempt to restore control for three minutes. Avon knows that it’s three minutes because he can see Sion surreptitiously checking his timepiece, waiting it out. 

Finally Sion gives a command and thousands of guards all around the plaza wade into the crowds, beating them back. Order is restored remarkably quickly; it dawns on a horrified Avon that he’s witnessing a relatively common occurrence. The bloodied dead and injured are shuffled quickly out to the adjoining streets and the people return to their neat units, some with obvious gaps.

Sion steps up to the microphone again. “People of Kilva, we share your anguish and your disgust and we have listened to your words. We would give this abomination to all of you to rip apart if we could.”

The crowd’s baying hate shakes Avon to the bone.

“But since we cannot, we shall do the best we can. We shall award him at dusk to the unit whose public service is most laudable today.” 

Sion jerks his head at Avon’s guards. Apparently his part in the proceedings is done because they hustle him into the building behind the platform and into a thoroughly nasty little cell with a tiny window that he can’t get near, complete with wall hooks for his manacles. He hangs there from his sore wrists, face touching the stinking and slimy wall, feeling the sharp pain in his ribs every time he breathes in and trying to work out how things have gone quite so disastrously wrong and when Blake is likely to get his arse in gear and rescue him. Long before dusk would be really, really good.

“Computer” is clearly an obscenity. One of those things that it really would have been useful to know. One of those things that a cultural survey would have picked up, if bloody Roj Blake hadn’t been in such a fucking hurry. Obscenity or not, they’ve got one, somewhere. Avon no longer cares much about finding it but if they’ve got a computer then they’ve got to have their own computer specialist and it’s that man or woman who might be willing to keep Avon alive long enough for rescue. 

He hates this place possibly more than anywhere else he’s ever been. He knows that the Federation have been responsible for all kinds of atrocity but he’s never witnessed first hand anything to match the sight of men and women being crushed to death in front of him by that deliberately engineered riot.

After what feels like hours but is probably no more than twenty minutes, his guards leave the cell and someone else enters. He can’t turn enough to see who so he just waits.

“What’s your name?” Sion’s rich voice.

He’s in too much pain to play games. “Avon.” 

“And where do you come from?”

“You said I came from Meros,” 

“Meros,” Sion says smoothly, “hasn’t got electricity yet. It’s hardly likely to be engaging in interplanetary travel. I have astronomers. They keep a careful watch on Meros, and I keep a careful watch on them. There’s a new object in the sky, extremely faint but it’s there in geostationary orbit. Your ship?”

“Its weapons could flatten this city.”

“But they won’t, not while you’re missing down here. What were you really doing in my rocket facility, Avon?”

“Exactly what I said. Looking for your computer. We have a device that detects computers. It can’t see yours, which interested me.”

“My computer?” Sion sounds genuinely surprised. “We don’t like computers on Kilva, as you may have noticed. Why are you so sure that your device is wrong?”

“You must have one.” Avon is really tired and sore and fed up of talking to a psychopathic dictator. “The computations for the rockets are far too complex to be done by hand. How many people died out there today?”

“One thousand two hundred and sixty at the last count. There’s another thousand or so in hospital. It’s not a problem. They will all be declared heroes of the war against Meros and their families will receive bonuses and a medal.”

“Even the ones shot by your soldiers?”

“Of course. Why make people unhappy unnecessarily? I need them, after all.” 

“Doesn’t every tyrant need their oppressed masses?” Avon asks cynically. 

“Rather more directly than that. It’s public service day, Avon. Don’t you have any idea of what that means?”

“Is it important?”

“I think you might find it important, given your reason for being here.” Sion reaches up and unhooks the chains. “Come over to the window.” 

Avon shuffles over, watching for a chance to thump Sion with the manacles. The man is carefully staying out of reach and the guards are at the open door.

“Look.”

From the cell Avon can see part of the plaza. The people are still there, still in their ranks. He thinks at first that nothing is happening, but then he starts to notice the single people walking over to an adjacent unit and walking back. Loads of them, constantly on the move. It looks like an ant’s nest.

Something is happening. Something of practical importance, he thinks. This is public service- a collective project of enormous scale. He watches the people go back and forth. They must be carrying something, maybe instructions, or information between the units. Carrying data. 

Enlightenment finally dawns. “They’re your computer!”

“We don’t call it that, but yes. One day out of five, eight hours of computations by virtually every adult on the planet. The rocket calculations were completed in twelve days.”

Avon watches his idiosyncratic computer components at work, still not quite believing it possible.

“They’re all working particularly hard today,” Sion says. “They all want to be in the unit that is awarded the Meros computer spy.” 

“What size is a unit?”

“Fifteen.”

He wishes he hadn’t asked. “This has all been a misunderstanding. I’ve got no use for your human calculators. I came looking for technology. Let me go and my ship and I will leave without interfering any further. Keep me here and my crew will respond with deadly force.”

“I don’t think they will,” Sion says, smugly. “They haven’t so far. I think once you’re dead they’ll just fly away. And I have promised your death to fifteen lucky workers, remember. I’ll see you again at dusk.” The guards are called back, and they slam Avon against the wall again, driving spasms through his damaged ribs, hooking him up to hang uselessly. 

The next few hours drag incredibly slowly. Avon spends them being in considerable pain and listening out for the first sign of disruption but there are no noises off and all the guard changes seem to be going smoothly. Where the hell is Blake? What’s keeping him? He could be dying down here. Hell, he probably will be dying down here, when the sun goes down.

At last- at long last- there is the sound of gunfire, far away then getting closer. Avon guesses that it’s no further away than two or three corridors by the time the boneshaking explosions stop. There’s nothing, and then noise much closer- modern weapons, this time. He can hear the door open behind him. Blake. It must be. Please be Blake.

The tap of high heeled shoes on the stone floor warns him a second before she speaks.

“Kerr Avon? It is Avon, isn’t it? Only from an unaccustomed angle, and so much more bare skin than usual.”

He takes a deep breath. So that’s why Blake hasn’t come. The danger has just been replaced by a different one. Despite the exhausting hours spent in agony he needs to be alert.

“What are you doing here, Servalan?” Surely she hasn’t come just for him?

“I read the reports, and I was in the area. An aggressive war leader might be in a excellent position to bring this planet into the Federation, if he could be brought on side. I thought I’d drop in and see. Of course when we accidentally flushed the Liberator out of orbit it seemed that I wasn’t the only person interested in Kilva.”

Sion and the Federation. What an unpleasant combination. But there had been gunfire… “And was he ‘brought onside’?”

“Not exactly.” She sounds a little put out. “Halfway through a perfectly civil conversation several people in the room attacked me without warning. We had to eliminate the entire leadership. A pity, but I’ve appointed an interim government to bring the planet into the Federation while the locals are still in chaos, so we’ll have it anyway.”

Avon supposes that he ought to feel bothered that the Federation has acquired another subordinate planet, but he can’t help feeling that for the people of Kilva even rule by Servalan’s puppets is a distinct improvement over the status quo. Hell, you could probably put Travis in charge and conditions would still improve.

“And what exactly brings Blake to a place like Kilva, Avon? Clearly whatever it was failed, but I still admit to being curious.”

He could tell her, he supposes, with no harm now but he doesn’t much feel like being obliging so he stays silent. He hears the heels again, closer this time, and then the sharp touch of a nail tracing a circle under his shoulder blade. 

“Avon! Are those love bites?”

“It’s a highly infectious skin condition,” he says flatly. 

“I don’t think so.” He hates the amusement in her voice. “Shall I guess who?”

“Or you could just shoot me, although I’d appreciate the opportunity to put on some clothes first. Dying like this would be annoying.”

“I don’t think I’m going to shoot you.”

That’s good news, he supposes. He’s tempted to ask why not but he doesn’t want to accidentally argue her out of it. She tells him anyway.

“I’m leaving the pursuit ships here for a couple of weeks, to assist with a smooth transfer of power. If the locals haven’t killed you by then, or you haven’t died from lack of water, or food, or,” she draws the nail suggestively down his spine, “general misuse, then I imagine your gallant lover will come galloping to the rescue when the ships leave. This place is squalid now. Can you imagine what it will be like in two weeks time? If you’re very fortunate it will only be your own filth caking you, but I don’t think you’re going through a lucky patch, are you, Kerr Avon?”

He almost forgets, sometimes, how well she knows them and how much she hates them all. If Blake finds him in the state that Servalan is predicting with such relish it will not just mean the end of their brief physical liaison, but almost certainly of his place on Liberator. There is only so much humiliation that he can bear to be reminded of and he won’t take pity from any of them.

“I can pass on a message to Liberator on my way out if there’s anything you’d like to tell them?” A small voice recorder is pushed over his shoulder. What does she want from him? Sentiment. Useless defiance. Pleading. Anything that will make her laugh. He glares at the slim hand holding the device in impotent fury. If he says anything at all that she thinks might help him or them then she won’t transmit the message, of course.

He has to say something. He has to confirm that he’s alive, at least. Avon takes one more second to compose himself, then starts to speak.

“Roj.” It isn’t hard to sound utterly defeated. “I’m sorry, Roj. Tell the damn box it was right all along. There was nothing here, and now I’m trapped between the Feds and the locals…” As he speaks he can almost feel the sharpness of Servalan’s smile.

* * * * * * * * * *

Avon is dragged out of semi-consciousness by the explosions. He manages to open his eyelids to see the walls of the cell tinged red. Fire outside in the city; he can hear it roaring in the brief pauses between the gunfire. 

His wrists and shoulders feel as if they are on fire as well. His chest burns. He’s desperately thirsty and incredibly tired but he drives himself to stay alert and listen, since he can’t see anything but the walls. One noise is familiar; a Federation lander taking off, screaming dangerously low over the city. 

The noise of riot and disorder go on seemingly interminably. He can feel the heat of the fires now, warming the cell; he tries to calculate the comparative risks that he’ll be killed in a blaze or murdered by looters, decides both are much higher than he really wants to think about and he can’t do anything about either. A huge explosion shakes the building; he can hear walls collapse in all directions with accompanying screams. That must have been the rocket fuel depot, he decides, closing his eyes a little too late against the cascade of stone dust. 

Despite the apocalyptic chaos all around Avon slips back eventually into a semi-comatose state, registering nothing but exhaustion and pain. He doesn’t really respond to the voice or the sudden change in lighting but when an agonisingly laboured breath brings clean familiar air into his lungs he knows that he’s home.  


* * * * * * * * * *

Avon wakes slowly. Med bay; the slight antiseptic smell is unmistakeable. He lies still, eyes closed, trying to assess his own condition. Numbness, mainly. Nothing actively hurts, which is a pleasant change. His right hand’s warmer than the rest of him; he puzzles about that, can think of no immediate explanation, gives up and opens his eyes.

“About time.” 

“Blake.” Avon lifts his head slightly. Ah. The explanation for the hand is that Blake is holding onto it. He tries an eyebrow and Blake grins but doesn’t let go.

“And here was I thinking we were on first name terms, Kerr.” Blake’s unworried enough to be amused, so Avon reckons that his condition can’t be too serious. 

“I was fairly sure that you’d know we weren’t, so please don’t call me that again.”

Blake nods, slightly more serious. “It was easy enough to tell that your message wasn’t what it seemed. It was rather more difficult to figure out what you were trying to say.”

“I was a little under pressure at the time.” Avon says, defensively. “Inventing a cipher quite literally under Servalan’s nose isn’t exactly straightforward, even when one isn’t in bloody agony.”

“I saw the place we got you out of and I got the med report.” Blake says, quietly. “You don’t need to justify yourself to me. What you managed was absolutely incredible.”

Blake’s familiar hyperbole, Avon thinks, and almost smiles. “How long?”

“From the recording of your message to us receiving it, four hours. It took us a couple of hours to make any sense of it.” Blake grimaces, wryly. “Vila figured out most of it, him and Orac. I had to supply a bit of context in places though.” 

Avon hadn’t thought of anyone but Blake hearing it. Bits had been, or had pretended to be, personal. It didn’t matter. “Go on.” 

“Propaganda on tech light planets is tricky, especially when we couldn’t get close because of those damn pursuit ships. We sent in missiles set to explode at ten thousand feet with leaflet payloads. That took another four hours to sort out, I’m afraid. We had to source the paper from Meros, which was a tale in itself. They… never mind that now. We were as fast as we could possibly be.” He sounds apologetic. 

“Then how long?” He’s up to ten hours after Servalan left. Surely it had been much longer?

“Then things got moving. We picked up the Federation reports; the riots started within thirty minutes and over half the high ranking Feds and their guards were dead within an hour. The remaining ones hightailed it out of there and the pursuit ships left the system about 90 minutes after the leaflets landed. After that we were with you within minutes.” Blake shakes his head, amused admiration. “I’ll say one thing, you certainly know how to organise an effective resistance movement, Avon.” 

“That wasn’t a resistance movement.” The memory left a very sour taste. “The poor sods were programmed; Sion’s conditioning. You could have gone in there and offered them all real freedom and prosperity, and they’d have torn you apart just as they did the Federation as soon as you said the word “computer”.” He wonders briefly how many ‘idiosyncratic computer components’ died in the uprising. It’s not relevant now.

Eleven and a half hours after Servalan. Was that all? Avon has a sudden image of something of what two weeks might have been like and he shudders.

“I should let you rest.” Blake seems reluctant to relinquish his hand. “You look like hell.”

“I could do with some more sleep,” he says. Nothing might hurt but prolonged unconsciousness still sounds remarkably appealing. He’s been thoroughly battered and he doesn’t much want to talk to anyone, even Blake, (especially Blake) until he feels resilient again. 

 

* * * * * * * * * *

 

The dearth jazz fills the darkened room, spiky and discordant, Avon lies on his bed, eyes closed, trying to follow all six patterns that supposedly underlie the notoriously difficult piece. The music has become eerily familiar over the past few weeks. He’s not sure that he likes it, exactly, but it keeps him occupied. 

The knock is quiet, but he knows the music well enough to pick it out. He swings himself off the bed. “Come in.”

“Am I disturbing you?” Blake steps gingerly over the threshold. “You’ve redecorated!”

“Yes,” Avon says. He intends it as an answer for both but the subtlety is lost on Blake, who turns around in the middle of his sitting room, inspecting the furnishings. 

“It’s not exactly cosy.” Avon has replaced the ridiculous squishy chairs with a single geometric plastic one. There’s a functional desk up against the short wall and a black metal scaffold of awkward angles and uneven lengths against the longer one.

“Can I help you?” He’d like Blake to go away.

“Possibly.” Blake tries the chair, huffs in disgust and walks past Avon to sit on the bed. “I think we should talk. Is this meant to be music?”

Avon turns it down a little, reluctantly. “About what?”

“Tell me what happened on Kilva.”

“Read the med report.”

“I’ve read the med report. Three fractured ribs- impact at close range, probably one of their projectile weapons. Superficial burns, wrist and ankles. Abrasions, ditto. Torn muscles in one shoulder, sprained in the other. Minimal dehydration. As I read that you were shot at close range, chained up and left for the best part of a local day.” Blake is watching Avon closely. “Was that all?”

All? Wasn’t it enough? “Yes.”

Blake sits back, his voice dismissive. “Well, if that was all… That’s good. I thought maybe you’d had a rough time down there.” 

“A rough time?” Avon is staring at him, disbelieving. “A rough fucking time? Have you any idea?”

“I have some experience with torture.” Blake tells him. “What they did to you physically wouldn’t even count as light relief.”

“Get out!” He’s not having Roj Blake telling him that.

“I’m not finished.” And, over Avon’s repeated “Get out!” Blake bellows, full voiced. “I’M NOT DONE! Listen!” 

Avon quietens. 

“Better. I also have some experience with trauma. Something happened to you on Kilva, and I don’t mean the stuff that the med report showed. I’ve waited a month for you to talk to me about it, or to show signs of getting over it on your own. I’ve waited for you to show the faintest interest in coming near me again, and that’s been hardest of all. We can’t fix this unless you start talking to me.”

“There’s nothing to fix.” He always finds it hard to stand against Blake’s intensity, and it feels like he’s got no solid footholds any more. 

“Tell me what happened after I teleported out. Start there.” Blake stands up, draws him firmly down so that they are both sitting on the bed. “Please.”

He has nothing else, and he’s thoroughly tired of talking to himself so he starts talking to Blake. He tries to keep it as dry and objective as he can, but when he reaches the point at which Sion uses him to spark the riot he knows that he’s losing it. He tries to describe the bloodied corpses and the wailing of the injured, shot or trampled underneath an enormous crowd howling crazily for his destruction, but he stumbles over the words and finally he just falls silent. 

“Is Sion still alive?” 

He shakes his head. “Servalan’s people killed him. I think.”

“That’s a pity,” Blake says, calmly. “When did Servalan arrive?”

The question was easier to answer. “Not till much later. Sion got the crowd back under control and offered me as a work incentive to the most productive unit at the end of the day.” He grimaced. “I would very much like to have killed him myself. Anyway I waited in that cell for you to come for me for hours. I couldn’t work out what was keeping you, until Servalan turned up instead.” He manages a brief smile at Blake. “Not a substitution I was particularly happy about.” 

“What did she say?”

He shrugs. “You know what she’s like when she thinks she’s winning.” He didn’t much want to talk about that conversation.

“Your message…I was rather surprised that you decided to try to convince Servalan that we were lovers.” Blake’s voice is carefully neutral.

“You did that.” Avon rolls his shoulders without thinking about it, a long forgotten action. “If you recall, you left bitemarks.”

“Servalan saw those?” Blake sounds both horrified and rather pleased. 

“Servalan saw everything. I lost all my clothes very early on in this little adventure, remember.”

“Yes. I hadn’t forgotten.” Blake clearly decides to change the subject a little. “The message was intended to lure Liberator in, obviously.”

“Obviously.” Actually it had taken Avon several sleepless nights back on Liberator to realise that there would never have been any question of Blake leaving him to rot in a cell on Kilva for two weeks. Servalan must have known that as well. She’d just been tormenting him, very effectively. He is still furious with himself for being taken in. 

“I imagine talking to Servalan is particularly difficult under those circumstances.” Blake’s probing a little, Avon thinks. He doesn’t want to sound evasive or defensive, so he goes for light.

“Oh, I don’t know. I think she might have a bit of a thing for naked men in chains.”

“She’s not the only one.” Blake says.

Avon is stunned into temporary silence. That’s either the most inappropriate comment he’s ever heard or…something else. 

Blake doesn’t seem to notice his silence. “Would you like to know what we were doing while you were hanging around down there? And how we finally found you?”

He’s thought about the last bit over and over. What had he looked like? What had he said? What had Blake felt to see him reduced to that miserable figure? And, far too often, though he knows the question itself is crazy and inappropriate… how had Blake reacted to seeing him in chains? 

Now Blake is offering to tell him and he finds that he’s reluctant to take him up on it. Cowardice. He takes a breath. “I would certainly like to know why you took quite so long, yes.”

Blake sits back against the wall, legs loosely crossed. “Well. When I found you weren’t with me we went back for you. Three times, I think, before I finally had to admit that wasn’t going to work. You’d vanished and the place was swarming with soldiers, all extremely trigger happy. Unlike the others I did at least had the impact absorption stuff, but as you found out it’s hardly like a force field. Close range those guns take you down anyway. The only way to stay alive would have been to go in weapons blazing ourselves, but the death toll would have been horrific and the Kilvans weren’t our enemies. Or so I thought then, anyway.

“So we regrouped on the ship, hoping you were still alive somewhere, and tried to find out what was happening down there. They don’t even use radio so it wasn’t easy, but eventually we could see what looked like most of the population on this side of the planet all gathered in their town squares. Orac was still talking about religious observance, but unless they were into human sacrifice we couldn’t see what that would have to do with you.”

He nods slightly at Avon. “Human sacrifice turns out not so far off the mark, but we didn’t know that. Anyway we could work out roughly where the ones who must be the leaders had gone so I dressed up in my finest and prepared to go knocking to ask for you back, with suitable menaces. Unfortunately Servalan’s people came tearing in just before I could teleport down. We were reduced to skulking around the far reaches of the system, arguing about what we should do next.”

“There was a good chance that I was dead already. I’m surprised that the others didn’t manage to persuade you to leave.” 

Blake smiles at him. “I think you’d be surprised just how many risks they were prepared to take to get you back. The arguments were about what might work. Our fall back position was to swing by in a long orbit and teleport down while the pursuit ships were hammering Liberator’s shields. We thought we could probably get down before the ship exploded.”

“And lose Liberator?” Avon is genuinely shocked. “You idiots! I wouldn’t have thanked you for it.”

“We did think that you wouldn’t. Anyway none of us fancied carrying out that idea unless we at least had some evidence that you were still alive, or while there was anything else at all that we could try. So we took a long time over discussing it, and then of course Servalan’s message arrived.”

Blake stretches a hand out, rests it palm up against Avon’s thigh. A deliberately unthreatening touch, Avon thinks. He leaves it there because removing it would say something that he’s not sure about yet. 

“I have never been so delighted, or indeed so confused, to hear from Servalan in my life. You were alive- she was very keen to let me know about the chains- but she seemed to know rather more about our relationship than I did. Which, to be fair, wouldn’t have to be very much. It wasn’t until she forwarded your message that I started to make sense of it.” 

The hand on Avon’s thigh twitches. “You must have done an extremely good imitation of broken to persuade Servalan that you’d really say some of those things. She knows you, Avon, she’s good at reading people and she was completely taken in.”

There’s a question in there. Avon tries to avoid it. “She thinks her threats are a great deal more terrifying than they are. That made it easier.”

“What did she threaten you with?” The softness of Blake’s voice doesn’t fool Avon for an instant. 

“Time, mainly. She said the pursuit ships would leave after two weeks, by which time I would be a great deal hungrier, thirstier and more malodorous.” He pauses, wondering whether he really wants to say the next bit, but he suspects that if he doesn’t it will hang there between them indefinitely. “And, she suggested, repeatedly assaulted, as well. You saw how I was chained up. It was an obvious comment to make, in the circumstances.”

“Yes.” Blake says, and nothing else for a few seconds. Then “I’m sorry, Avon. My remark a few moments ago was deeply insensitive.”

“Which one?” As if it hadn’t mattered, as if he hadn’t even noticed. The music’s still quietly discordant in the background.

“About…finding you naked in chains attractive.”

“Ah, that one.” Avon says to give himself a little more time. “Well, do you or don’t you?” He pauses. “Or should I say, did you or didn’t you?”

“You were barely conscious!” Blake protests. 

“Does that make a difference?”

“I opened that door,” Blake’s voice is harsh now, “and I was just damn glad to see you in one piece. Some of the people behind the doors I’d opened on the way hadn’t been so lucky. And then the way you were hanging, you didn’t respond- I thought you might be dead after all. Believe me, the only thing I wanted from your naked body right then was a pulse, Avon.”

Avon’s not sure what sort of answer that is. “So when exactly did you find the thought appealing?”

Blake’s hand has retreated. “I shouldn’t… it was a stupid thing to say.” 

“No it wasn’t. It was a perfectly comprehensible statement, and I still want to know when exactly that particular thought went through your mind, Blake.”

Their eyes have locked. Avon’s absolutely determined. It’s important, he knows that, although he wouldn’t necessarily be able to explain why. 

Blake buckles first. He’s said too much; he’s already on the back foot with nowhere to go. “Afterwards. Once or twice.” And, defensively, “It’s been a very long month.”

Hasn’t it just. Avon doesn’t say anything straight away and Blake goes on, with a tinge of aggression now, “In my head you aren’t injured, if that’s what you were wondering, or shut up in some fucking awful place waiting to be raped by some violent stranger. You’re just standing there, muscles tensed against the metal, a little sweaty, that’s all. I said I was sorry.” He stands up. “Thank you for telling me what happened. I’m sorry that I persuaded you to go down there at all and I really am sorry that I screwed this conversation up,”

“Where are you going?”

Blake turns, a little puzzled. “I thought I’d leave before I was thrown out.”

Avon shrugs. “That’s up to you, though walking out does strike me as not a particularly good way to go about getting laid. I’m not desperate enough to chase you down the corridor, if that’s what you were thinking.”

“No, I wasn’t…” Blake stops, glares at him. “Hang on. What are you saying?”

Instead of answering Avon drops to his knees to pull a box out from under the bed. He’d made the contents himself in the week after he’d got back, forging them carefully link by link. He’d known that he needed to be able to separate the feel of metal against his skin from Sion’s bloody madness and Servalan’s delicate viciousness and the expectation- the fear- of worse. In the end he hadn’t worked out quite how to achieve that on his own and they’d stayed in their unmarked box.

He shoves it towards Blake with his foot. “Open it.” Blake bends over, pauses with his hand on the latch.

“Do I want to know what’s in here?”

“Possibly not. But you’re going to open it anyway.”

Blake nods, pulls the lid up and stops, frozen for several seconds. Then he kneels down, reaches in and pulls a handful of the seeming-delicate links out. 

“Is this a proposition, Kerr Avon? Or am I missing your point entirely?”

“For once you have actually managed to take the point first time, Roj Blake. Are you prepared to put your money where your mouth is, as one of our shipmates would doubtless phrase it?” 

Blake runs the links through his fingers, lets them fall back into the box and looks up at Avon. “If I am being entirely honest, I thought about it rather more often than once or twice.”

“Good.” Avon carefully lets a little amusement show. “That increases the chance of this being reasonably well choreographed.”

“If we’re talking choreography I can tell you that we’re not having your so-called music on, for a start.” Blake’s still hesitating. “This is all rather sudden. Are you absolutely sure it’s the best way to deal with what happened?”

“This has been on my mind long before I ever heard of Kilva.” Avon assures him.

“So why didn’t you mention it before?”

He offers a little of the truth. “I didn’t think that appearing that helpless in front of you was necessarily wise.”

“And how has that changed?”

Avon flashes a fast smile. “Last time someone tried to restrain me I still managed to set a whole planet on fire. Those,” he kicks the box and the chains rattle, “aren’t going to be nearly enough to render me harmless. But feel free to give it a try.”

Blake pulls out one of the metal cuffs, turns it over in his hand. “How does this open?”

“Put your thumb on the small flare halfway round.”

The cuff clicks opens, smoothly, closes the same way. “Thumbprint coded,” Avon explains.

“My thumbprints?”

“I thought it was a good idea to have someone on the ship apart from me who could open them. I don’t like having to rely on Vila’s professional competence; it isn’t reliable enough.”

“You’ve put some planning into this.” Blake stands up. “Now I need to do the same. Can you wait until tomorrow?”

If he absolutely has to. “Of course.” 

“Good. You’ve covered up our wall. Was that deliberate?”

“I thought,” Avon says cautiously, “that I was unlikely to need it.”

“Does that metal monstrosity come down?” 

“It’s _very_ firmly attached,”

“I’ll bear that in mind. Sleep well, Kerr Avon.” He leaves with the box tucked under his arm. 

Avon looks at the closed door for a few moments. He isn’t sure whether he’s more surprised by Blake or by himself. He’s even more surprised next morning to find that he’s slept like a lamb for the first time in a long while.

* * * * * * * * * *

Blake’s got a good memory for angles. Avon can feel the insistent pull on his muscles in almost exactly the places that had been damaged before, the left arm slightly further up and out than the right. It doesn’t hurt much this time; not yet, at least. 

The cuffs are as tight against his wrists as Sion’s weldings had been but these smooth, cold edges are of his own crafting. He likes the feel of them. Blake’s fingers are warm round his left ankle, adjusting the manacle, and he rather likes the feel of that too. He’s deliberately concentrating on such small sensations at the moment, keeping his mind distracted while Blake finishes up. 

“Done.” The hand slides up the back of his leg and pats his bare arse. “Comfortable?”

“Hardly the point. But not too uncomfortable.”

“Good.” 

Avon can hear Blake step back. Looking. He lets go of the smaller sensations, allows himself an image of what he must look like. He’s suspended in a wide Y shape from the steel scaffold, his ankles spread maybe 18 inches apart, and his toes just brushing the pile of his own carpet. It’s uncomfortable already, but he’s got a short while before the lactic acid in his muscles builds up to unbearable. He thinks about telling Blake not to take too long, but surely the man knows what he’s doing. 

“I wasn’t going to leave you like this,” There’s a hint of reassurance in Blake’s firm voice. “I just wanted to see…” He tails off.

“I know.” 

Warm hands run up and down his twisted biceps, then across his shoulders, currently carrying his entire body weight, and down his body to his hips. He concentrates on breathing slowly, in, out. In, out. Down his tense thighs and calves, to the metal pulling his ankles apart. He can hear Blake breathing heavily now. It’s ridiculously arousing.

Up again, and this time Blake’s not so coy; the hands go straight for his cock and his balls. He can’t move either to encourage or discourage; he is helpless to resist the slow, definite caress of fingers, or the way Blake is simultaneously rubbing his own erection up against his backside with clear intent.

He’s got little enough control over his own reactions, either. He could choose to stay silent- near silent, anyway- as Blake’s hands drag him to the precipice and push him over into spiralling freefall, but this isn’t about self control, not this time, and he doesn’t waste his energy trying to conceal his reactions. He can feel well enough what those responses are doing to Blake. Feedback loops, he thinks, giddily, as he crashes at the foot of the cliff. Sometimes feedback loops are useful, despite his natural inclination to dampen them. 

“Shall we do it now?” Blake’s voice is clumsy with arousal, “Avon? If it hurts too much…”

“Stop pissing around and just do it!” he snaps. The pain’s worsening but his blood stream’s saturated with endomorphins and he doesn’t really care. All he wants is for Blake to fuck him right now.

Blake does exactly what he’s told. It’s not comfortable at all. As the numbing effects of his climax wears off Avon’s hurting a great deal now, his wrists and shoulders screaming objections to having to still bear his considerable weight and his body bruising against the scaffold by Blake’s enthusiastic assault. It feels as if he lacks all volition, not even a participant, just a body to swing a little back and forth, to be crushed against the bars as Blake digs his fingers hard into Avon’s hips to steady him and thrusts.

It doesn’t feel anything like his fears at all. He knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that he’s not really helpless. Not this time. He throws his head back and howls a mixture of glorious pleasure and agony, and Blake responds with smothered laughter, his teeth sinking deep in the nape of Avon’s neck. 

Too much. That last sharp pain’s too much and he’s ready to say so when Blake shudders his climax and in almost the same breath reaches up to thumb the cuffs open. He catches Avon as he falls backwards and lowers him carefully onto the carpet. “Easy.” 

There’s another silent scream as Avon’s shoulders rotate down, and then it’s just the rush of blood through his arms that makes him grimace. 

“All right?”

“Of course.” Avon reaches over his shoulder to poke at his neck, gets a flicker of pain that sets his teeth on edge in response and lets it alone. “Bed.” 

He lets Blake hook an arm under his shoulders and help him to it. Lying on his back he closes his eyes and mentally catalogues what hurts. Aches, mainly, and maybe the odd bruise where he’d come into contact with the scaffold a little too hard. The cuffs hadn’t chafed at all- he’s rather proud of that. 

“Was that anything like what you wanted?” Blake asks carefully.

“Close enough.” Any closer and he’d be in the med bay right now. That’s not out of the question in the future, as far as he’s concerned, but probably not a good way to end tonight’s proceedings. He doesn’t want to scare the man off, after all. 

What he wants right now… he’s halfway through concocting a scheme to get it when it occurs to him that he can simply ask. It’s an odd thought; he’s used to getting his way with Blake by manipulation, by argument or by sheer force of will. Mere suggestion is sometime of a new idea. He tries it out. “It was a bit short on mouth to mouth contact but we could remedy that right now.”

That works. Blake sprawls half on top of him, sweaty skin cool and damp against his, and kisses him until the aches have been long forgotten and Avon has drifted into an exhausted sleep. He wakes a little when Blake leaves him, murmurs a small complaint into the empty space.

“Go back to sleep.” Blake is taking down the chains from the scaffold. Avon can hear the quiet chinks as they are returned to the box. 

“Why are you doing that now?” He’s waking a little more now, enough to process a little of the situation. 

“Because you need to sleep and I need a distraction.”

Avon shakes his head a little to wake himself. Blake’s still naked, and (he blinks) quite erect. It’s an appealing sight. “I imagine that I can distract you effectively enough.”

Blake unloops the last chain with a scrape of metal against metal. “I didn’t want to disturb you, not after that.”

“I’m awake now.” He is, and getting distinctly interested in proceedings.

“So you are.” Blake has obviously noticed his interest. He closes the box up, shoves it back under the bed. “Nothing rough.”

“Oddly enough I was about to say the same thing.”

Blake fits himself around Avon’s body. “How about this?” He spits on his hand and wraps it round both of them together. 

“That will do.” It feels damn good and he doesn’t have to move, which given his aches and pains is a bonus. He closes his eyes, lets Blake kiss him and bring them both off with laudable competence.

“I never imagined,” Blake murmurs afterwards, “that you’d be like this in bed.”

Avon’s eyes flick open. “Like what?”

“Lazy?” Blake’s voice is amused. “Is that the right term? I would say passive, but you’re never that."

“The correct technical term,” Avon says dryly, “is ‘submissive’, I believe. And if you ever so much as think about using it in connection with me I’ll tear your guts out with my bare hands.” He means it. 

Roj Blake just huffs laughter at that before curling up against his side on the narrow bed to sleep. 

The End


End file.
